This site is connected to the research lab of Dr. Samuel Gosling. Dr. Gosling researches personality and social psychology. The purpose of the Music Personality Test is to find out what the quiz taker's music preferences say about his/her personality.
Type of Material:
Online personality test.
Recommended Uses:
In or out-of-class exercise to support lecture or other materials about music and personality. To study the relationship between personality, attitudes, and values and the music that people like. The Music Personality Test may serve as a fun "ice-breaking" activity for introductory music classes.
Technical Requirements:
Internet access. This material works on desktop and mobile devices.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
A tool that engages learner in a self-reflective, self-rating activity in the context of musical genres. This psychology test will tell you how other people see you based on what types of music you listen to and will illustrate the relationship between musical preference and personality type. Demonstrate an online research mechanism.
Target Student Population:
The Music Personality Test can be used by multiple populations and age-groups from early teens to adults. Undergraduate and graduate students studying psychology, sociology, and music.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
A knowledge of and understanding of a variety of musical genres. One needs familiarity with these genres, ranging from hip-hop to international to classical music, in order to respond to items on questionnaire.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
Clear questions. Easy to complete in short amount of time. The Music Personality Test is fun, amusing, interesting, and has the potential to get groups of students thinking and talking about similarities and differences between and among themselves by sharing their preferences in musical genres. It has a "personal" relevance, engaging the learner immediately with this relevance. Explanation of the personality types and how they relate to the music selected by the test taker. Description of where the test taker falls on the spectrum for each personality type measured. Links to the researcher's work for further investigation of the topic.
Concerns:
It is not a highly academic tool. This is not a bad thing, but it should be understood that it is more "fun" than "instructive". Accuracy is generalized.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
If the purpose of the Music Personality Test is to begin to engage music students in listening more acutely to the qualities of specific musical genres, then it does its job well. It is an introductory tool, in this reviewer's opinion, to a deeper conversation about music.
Concerns:
This is not a stand alone educational experience. Guidance and explanation from the instructor should accompany the use of the site in order to enhance student understanding.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
Easy to use. The instructions are clear. The Music Personality Test is brief; one can take it in a short amount of time. Once completed, the test provides the learner with a test-result url for future use or sharing in emails/texts, and an embed code as well. The embed code creates a link on a web page to one's test result page. One can imagine students sharing results with class members on a wiki page, for example.
Concerns:
The areas where the test taker can rate the results are not entirely clear. Hitting submit at any of those points will exit you out of the system. Only hit submit at the end of the site.
Other Issues and Comments:
Not so much a learning object as it is for general interest.
Creative Commons:
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